The
spring of 2003 marks the 300th anniversary of the
culmination of the
historical Akô Incident of 1701-03, when forty-six rônin
were executed
by seppuku for having avenged the death of
their lord, Asano Takumi-no-kami, by killing his enemy Kira
Kozuke-no-suke
after 22 months of plotting. In the ensuing three centuries, their
story has
been retold endlessly, constantly expanded and embellished, to become Japan’s “national legend.”The single most crucial
event in this process of embellishment occurred in the autumn of 1748,
almost a
half-century after the initial incident, when a puppet play entitled Kanadehon Chûshingura (translated into
English by Donald Keene as “The Treasury of Loyal Retainers”) was
staged in Osaka.
It was an instant success, and within
months the
play had become a hit on the kabuki stage as well. Chûshingura
has remained the most frequently performed play in the
repertoire of both those genres of traditional Japanese theater
throughout the
intervening two and a half centuries.

This
exhibition
celebrates the theatrical tradition of Chûshingura
with a display of the ways in which the play was promoted in print in
the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These remain the only detailed
records of
the Japanese stage tradition in an era before modern techniques of
recording in
real time became available in the early twentieth century.

The books and
prints
displayed here are from the collections of the TsubouchiMemorialTheatreMuseum at WasedaUniversity and the Waseda University Library in Tokyo. The exhibition is intended to mark an
agreement
between the libraries of ColumbiaUniversity and WasedaUniversity, signed in May 2002, to extend cooperation
over a
wide range of mutual interests.

This
exhibition is made possible by a grant from the
Weatherhead Program Development Fund of the East Asian Institute, ColumbiaUniversity, and with
the cooperation of the WasedaUniversity Library and
the TsubouchiMemorialTheatreMuseum.

2. The First
Jôruri Texts on the 47 Rônin

The
Japanese puppet theater that is today known as “bunraku” began in the 17th
century as a combination of the movements of puppets on a stage with
oral
narration to samisen accompaniment, in a style known as “jôruri”
(after
a character
in an early tale). The texts for this “puppet jôruri” (ayatsuri
jôruri) came to be written with two ends in mind. First,
they served as the libretto for the narrator (tayû)
who
sat to one side of the puppet stage, chanting in a style known
as gidayû-bushi, originally employed by Chikamatsu
Monzaemon,
one of the
foremost puppet playwrights in the seventeenth century. At
the same time, the jôruri texts were printed and sold as books be read independently, both for pleasure and as a
way of
studying jôruri chanting by amateurs. The
printed texts displayed here were known asmaruhon, “round books,”perhaps after the distinctive
round script in which they were written.

The texts
of the plays featured here―Goban Taiheiki (ca 1710, by Chikamatsu),
Onikage Musashi abumi(1713, by his rival Ki no Kaion), and Chûshin
kogane tanzaku (1732, by a team led by Namiki
Sôsuke)―are all early works based directly
on
the story of the
revenge of the 47 Rônin of Akô. Since it was forbidden to
deal openly
in print
with such recent political events, the time was transposed to the Kamakura period
(13th-14th c.), and the names
changed (if only slightly). Although no longer performed, each
of these
plays is noteworthy for the
influence it exerted on the plot and
characters of KanadehonChûshingura.

Kanadehon
Chûshingura,
often translated as The Treasury of Loyal Retainers, is a
puppet play of
eleven acts, written by the famous trio Namiki Sôsuke, Takeda
Izumo,
and
Miyoshi Shôraku.After its first
performance at the Takemoto Theater in Osaka in the
eighth month of 1748, this dramatic
depiction of the trials and
tribulations of 47 Rônin during
their long wait to avenge their dead lord quickly became the dominant
fictional
rendition of the events that transpired after Asano’s attack on Kira
some fifty
years earlier. Indeed, Kanadehon Chûshingura so infected the popular imagination that
the
storyline and characterizations soon came to be difficult
to separate from the historical event in the
minds of most Japanese.

The
play, of which a maruhon libretto is
on display here (3-A),
drew heavily
on earlier
plays about the Akô vendetta, but synthesized earlier storylines
and
characters
while improvising new twists and themes in ways that strongly appealed
to the
merchant class of the Osaka-Kyoto region that was its primary original
audience, particularly by introducing stories of money and love that
were the
staple of many other jôruri works.

The
libretto on display here is open to the famous opening lines of Kanadehon Chûshingura: “It is said that ‘The
sweetest food, if left untasted, remains unknown, its savor wasted.’ The same holds true of a country at
peace: the loyalty and courage of its fine soldiers remain hidden, but
the
stars, though invisible by day, at night reveal themselves.”

Kabuki
theaters were already in the habit of borrowing
plays from the puppet theater, and they wasted little time in
appropriating
that Kanadehon Chûshingura. From late
1748 into early 1749, kabuki versions were staged successively in Osaka, Edo, and Kyoto, followed
by a summer of intense competition as
two of the leading theaters in Edo put on their
own renditions of the play, the Ichimura Theater in the fifth month,
then the
Nakamura Theater the following month.

These
seminal early kabuki productions in Edo are
documented in a number of surviving prints, of which the example from
the WasedaTheatreMuseum (4-A,
displayed in photographic reproduction,
since the original is too fragile to travel) is particularly
interesting. The
title of the print along the right-hand margin mentions “two theaters,”
which
must refer to the competition of the Ichimura and Nakamura Theaters.
The print
is executed in the distinctive style known as “uki-e”
(pictures in which objects “float,” or pop out from the
surface) that used Western linear perspective, which was brought to Japan
by way of China, to create dramatic effects.

In this
very early pictorial rendition of the play, we can see two key details
already
in place, the zigzag pattern on the jackets of the rônin, and the
use
of labels
in the kana syllabary to identify
them (a connection reflected in the title word “Kanadehon”
or “kana copybook,”
from the coincidence that the number of avengers exactly matched the 47
letters
of the syllabary). The leader Kuranosuke, identified by the kana
for “i”, is seen about to strike Kira, cringing among
the charcoal
bales, with his dagger. It is unclear whether the kabuki stage
enactment of the
night attack at this time was quite so chaotic.

Photographic reproduction
of the original ôôban
woodblock print with hand-coloring.

Tsubouchi
Memorial Theatre Museum 100-0868

5. The Print
Culture of Edo
Theater: Bunraku and Kabuki Programs

The
bunraku and kabuki
theaters both
evolved within a thriving
culture of woodblock printing, leaving a huge legacy of material that
documents
countless productions. Particularly important for theater history were
the
printed programs, or banzuke
(“rank lists”) that began in the Genroku period
(1688-1704). Professor Torigoe Bunzô of Waseda University has
studied
such
programs closely and estimates that some 10,000 puppet theater programs
and as
many as 200,000 kabuki programs survive today from the Edo period.

On
exhibit here are several types of Edo theater banzuke,
beginning with a single-sheet program for a 1763 jôruri
puppet performance of Kanadehon
Chûshingura (5-A)
that lists the
chanters for all eleven acts to
the lower
left, followed by the samisen players; above is a picture of the famous
letter-reading scene from Act VII (see 17-A and 17-B). Item 5-B is the
most
straightforward type of kabuki program, known as a yakuwari-banzuke
(“listing of the roles”) consisting of three
sheets (six pages). The opening page of the 1787 example displayed here
shows
the crest and name of the Kiri Theater in the center, surrounded by the
crests
and names of the leading actors for this performance. (The mimasu
crest of three nested squares of the Ichikawa family
appears fully six times.) These
continue on the follow page (descending in rank), followed by two pages
listing
the eleven acts, and two more pages with a complete listing of all the
actors
in much smaller print.

The
most appealing theater publications were the e-banzuke
“picture-programs,” of which three examples are shown
here. The earliest one (6-A),
for the
Ichimura Theater, dates from the
memorable summer of 1749 when Kanadehon
Chûshingura made its first great sensation in Edo. The
program is
here open
to the pages showing scenes from Acts VII and IX, starting on the left
with the
celebrated letter-reading scene in the Ichiriki Teahouse. The script
gives
hints of the plot, while the actors are identified by crests that would
be
familiar to kabuki fans.

The
other two picture-programs are from four to five decades later, from
which we
can see how the style has changed. Item 6-B
shows the cover of a
typical
picture-program, here for the Miyako Theater in 1795, showing the
theater crest
and title “Kanadehon Chûshingura” in
the center against a background of a curtain with cherry blossoms. The
other example
(6-C)
is a two-page spread from a
1787 picture-program at the Kiri
Theater
showing the scene in Act IX in which Ôboshi Rikiya stabs Kakogawa
Honzô
with
his lance, as the blood spurts forth. In contrast to the picture
program of
1749, the entire composition is far more unified as a picture, with all
textual
explanation eliminated except for the inscribed names of the actors
(now in
addition to their crests).

One
particularly interesting type of kabuki-related publication was known
as “ômuseki,” which took advantage of the
improvisational nature of kabuki, where the lines in key scenes were
varied
from performance to performance. Even with a jôruri-derived play
like Kanadehon Chûshingura, in which efforts
were made to be roughly faithful to the original text, lines were
constantly
changed and elaborated on by different actors, particularly for moments
of high
drama. The word ômuseki (“parrot
rock”) refers to rock faces that echo back the voice, and was extended
to these
printed works that enabled fans to “parrot” their idols.

The
fad
for imitating the distinctive “voice color” (kowairo)
of individual actors began in Edo in the 1770s and flourished thereafter. Unlike the formal
artistic
practices that required a licensed teacher, this was a casual hobby
that anyone
could try out. Displayed here are two (7-A and 7-B) ômuseki
from near the end of the Edo period, revealing a quality of
printing that was a quantum leap above the cheap and quick production
of
ordinary theater programs. The covers were printed in full color,
designed by
leading artists of actor prints, and the text inside was carefully laid
out and
carved. These were clearly books to keep, not one-shot programs.

The ômuseki,
as seen here,
consisted simply
of a series of separate passages from the current play, with the name
of the
role in smaller script above, and the actor’s name written larger
below―an
appropriate indication of which was more important.

After
its initial popularity on the kabuki stage in 1749, Kanadehon
Chûshingura continued to be performed regularly in the
three major cities of Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka, as well as in provincial venues. As
the years passed, a body of lore and criticism about the play
accumulated,
particularly about the ways in which specific actors performed
different roles.

One
revealing indication of this body of connoisseurship is the book
displayed here
(8-A),
published in Kyoto in 1785
and entitled Kokon iroha
hyôrin or “Collection of Reviews of Chûshingura,
Past and Present” (the word “iroha”
referring to the associations of the 47 Rônin with the kana
syllabary). The page shown to the right is the end of the
introduction, signed by the compiler, “Hachimonsha Jishô,” who
was in
fact
Jishô III (1738-?), the grandson of the famous Kyoto publisher
Hachimonjiya. He explains that 38 years
have now passed since the first kabuki performances of the play in
1749, and
that during this period it was staged 41 times in the large theaters of
the
three major cities (10 each for Kyoto and Osaka, and 21 for Edo)―an
average of
just over once a year.

To the
left is the beginning of several pages of a table providing detailed
information about each performance, much of which is not available
anywhere
else. This page begins with Kyoto performances, each listed in a different row with the
vertical columns
showing which actors played each of 26 roles. Succeeding pages offer
critical
evaluations of performances by individual actors.

The
first act of puppet plays on historical themes (jidaimono)
was known as the “Daijo,” or ‘grand prelude.’ As
codified by Chikamatsu Monzaemon,
the Daijo was required to be ceremonious and felicitous in tone.These Daijo openings for historical
plays were taken over into kabuki, but only in Kanadehon
Chûshingura has it been carried over into modern times as
an essential part of any full production of the play. This reflects not
only
the general faithfulness of the kabuki version to its jôruri
roots, but
also
the importance of the Daijo in Chûshingura
in establishing the grand theme of revenge, necessitated by the
insulting
attempt of the villain Kô no Moranao (here as always dressed in
black)
to
seduce Lady Kaoyo, the wife of Enya Hangan.

The
Daijo is performed in a grand setting in front of the steps leading up
to the
vermillion halls of Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine in Kamakura,
with a giant camphor tree to the left. In keeping with the solemn and
ceremonious character of the Daijo, the high-ranking male characters
wear voluminous
robes with wide sleeves known as daimon (“large
crests”) after the oversize family crests of the sort we see
we see here both in the print (9-B)
and stage photograph (9-A)
on
Moranao,
representing a paulownia leaf and blossom. In the print, Moronao heaps
scorn on
Wakasanosuke, whose hand reaches for his sword in defense of his honor.

The
most impressive legacy of Kanadehon Chûshingura
in print is the large number of color woodblock prints that were made
primarily
to advertise upcoming performances by showing the major actors in
well-known
scenes, but which also extended into a variety of peripheral genres as
well. In
general, only a limited number of dramatic high points were selected
for illustration,
so that the same scenes were depicted over and over. This part of the
exhibition moves through Kanadehon
Chûshingura act by act, skipping only Act II, which is
considered
inferior
and is rarely performed, and Act VIII, which is a michiyuki travel
scene in the
original jôruri text, but which was replaced in kabuki after 1833
with
a completely
different michiyuki performed after Act III.

Many
kabuki prints, particularly those of the nineteenth century that
account for
most of the ones on display here, were issued in multiples of two
(diptychs)
and three (triptychs). This was a general tendency in late Edo prints, and was done in
part to overcome the size limitations of the
printing blocks, which could not exceed the normal dimensions of the
wild
cherry tree from which they were made. The multi-sheet formats also
offered the
possibility, however, ofenjoying
each single sheet separately. Many of
these
works can
thus be visually apprehended in two different ways, either as a
multi-sheet
unit showing actors interacting with one another, or as single
portraits of
specific actors.

The
majority of kabuki prints depicting Kanadehon
Chûshingura were intended for a specific performance, which
can be
identified by the crests of the actors playing particular roles. They
served in
this way as both advertisements and documents of one-time performances,
and
were rarely reprinted, so that the total number of any one print
probably ran
from one hundred to several hundred copies.

The
total variety of different Chûshingura
prints, however, was very large, particularly if we include the many
plays that
were derivative of Kanadehon Chûshingura,
a category known as kakikae, or
“re-writes.” In addition, some prints depicted not a particular
performance,
but a generic Chûshingura scene,
sometimes with specific actors, sometimes not even related to the
kabuki stage
but rather illustrating the jôruri narrative. Of a total of some
800
Chûshingura-related prints in the TsubouchiMemorialTheatreMuseum at
Waseda, 45 percent show specific performances of Kanadehon
Chûshingura, 18 per cent depict kakikae
performances, and 37 percent are of a generic or
miscellaneous type.

The
total number of different Chûshingura prints ever issued was long
thought to be
in the range of 1500-2000, but in the preparation of a complete catalog
of such
prints that is soon to be published by Akô City, it has been
discovered
that
the actual number is closer to 5000, constituting a huge body of visual
material on this single play and its many spin-offs.

In this
exhibition, the artist who appears with by far the greatest frequency
is Utagawa
Kunisada (1786-1864), who used the name
“Toyokuni III” after 1844. He accounts
for one-third of the prints shown here, followed by his fellow Utagawa
school
contemporary Kuniyoshi(1797-1861),
with half as many. All the rest are
by scattered different artists.

11. Act III: The
Palace
Attack

The
historical event that started the entire Chûshingura phenomenon
occurred in EdoCastle
in the spring of 1701, when Asano
Naganori attacked and wounded Kira Yoshinaka. For the crimes of
unsheathing his
sword in the shogun's palace and disrupting the reception of an
imperial
delegation from Kyoto,
Asano was
ordered to perform seppuku, in effect a form of honorable
execution. The
reliable historical records give no clear indication of the reasons for
Asano’s
anger, although it was widely rumored that Kira had insulted him for
failing to
provide adequate gifts in return for ceremonial guidance. History
offers little
support, however, for the view that had clearly been established by the
time of Kanadehon Chûshingura, that Asano was
a paragon of samurai virtue who was sent to his death by the evil and
greedy
Kira. The major contribution of Chûshingura
was to replace greed with lust as the primary vice of the villain
Moronao.

In
the diptych to the left (11-A),
we see Moranao making an insulting
harangue
against Enya Hangan after he has read a letter (in the form of the
rolled-up
scroll in his left hand) from Hangan’s wife Kaoyo that subtly spurned
Moronao’s
advances. The triptych (11-C)
shows the next instant, as Enya Hangan
reaches for
his sword to strike Kira, after which he would be restrained from
completing
his goal by Kakogawa Honzô, who listens in from the right.

A
michiyuki (literally
‘travel-going’) is a short interlude that stylistically depicts the
journey of
one or more characters to a particular location.In
the narrated text of puppet plays,
the michiyuki usually serves to
recount the history and poetic associations attributed to famous sites,
thereby
connecting the play to both the physical world and to literary
tradition.In kabuki plays, on the other
hand, michiyuki consist primarily of song
and dance.After the michiyuki
form in jôruri was perfected by
Chikamatsu
Monzaemon, its became a near obligatory
component of
every play, both puppet and kabuki.

In
the puppet play Kanadehon Chûshingura, Act VIII
is the michiyuki, but in Edo kabuki, a
totally
new michiyuki was devised in 1833 for the Kawarazaki Theater, placed
after Act
III and showing the two lovers, Kanpei and Okaru, leaving the capital
for
Okaru’s country home. While much of the original text remained the
same, three
dances and two fight sequences were added, successfully transforming it
into a
visual spectacle unmatched in the rest of the play. It quickly became a
standard part of any kabuki production of Kanadehon Chûshingura,
although
it is now usually performed after Act IV (out of order for the story,
but
better timing when Act II is cut).

As
seen in the diptych 12-A,
the michiyuki is often performed with the
chanters and
musicians in full view on the stage rather than in a box above to the
side. The
other diptych (12-B)
shows the stylish lovers Kanpei and Okaru
confronting the
clown-like Bannai and his servant Bekunai in a stylized fight scene.

Enya
Hangan,
confined to his residence after attacking Moronao, has been sentenced
to seppuku. In both prints here, the Asano family crest of crossed feathers lines the walls
behind. In
the play, Hangan asks whether his trust chief retainer Ôboshi
Yuranosuke has
yet arrived; twice being told no, he plunges his dagger into his
abdomen―at
which moment Yuranosuke enters on the hanamichi
from the left, too late for the moment of decision but still in time to
speak
with his dying lord.

This
timing is overlooked in the diptych by Kunisada (13-A),
which focuses
rather on
the mental attitude of each of the men, Hangan gripping his dagger in
his
resolve to die as his hand reaches to pull back his outer garment and
reveal
the pale blue death robes beneath (as seen in the stage photograph).
Yuranosuke
bends low in deference to his lord, his face filled with concern and
affection.
This is a good example of a diptych in which each half works better
alone than
the two together, and presumably each could have been purchased
separately

The
seppuku of Enya Hangan is always a high point
in any performance of Kanadehon
Chûshingura, as the audience watches in total silence. Just
before
he at
last expires, Hangan declares “I leave you this dagger as a memento of
me.
Avenge me!” Yuranosuke then gently pries the dagger from the grip of
his dead
master, and holds it up to vow revenge.

This
diptych (14-A)
is a characteristic print of the Meiji period, both in
the
distinctive facial types and in the strong, heavy colors. The dark
blues and
reds are probably the new chemical pigments that were introduced from
the West
in the 1860s and came to typify prints in the era of “civilization and
enlightenment” in the 1870s.

The
most unusual feature of this print, however, is that it is a type of
“trick
picture” (shikake-e), devised to
reflect the unusual casting of this particular performance at the
Shintomi
Theater, with the leading roles being rotated each day among different
actors.
The device seems to have been very popular, and this print was probably
a way
to advertise it, using the technique known as komochi-e
(“prints with children”). The face of each actor is in
fact a stack of separate faces that can be flipped up like a calendar,
each
showing a different actor, for a total of five for each role. The stack
of four
mini-prints is attached to the main print with thread. The names of the
actors
who performed each role (of which four played both) are listed on the
image of
a handscroll in the top center.

In
studying the details of the separate portraits for
the
different actors, there seems at first glance little to
distinguish one
from the other. Looking more closely, however, you can observe many
subtle
differences, particularly in the shape of the mouth, the position of
the eyes,
and the contours of the eyebrows. Like all ukiyo-e actor prints, these
works
bring us to contemplate the differences and
the overlap between an actor and his role.

Kanpei has
returned to his wife Okaru’s home in Yamazaki, eking out a meager
existence in
hiding, hoping to muster the money and credibility to become a samurai
again
and join the would-be avengers. At the same time, Ono Sadakurô,
an Enya
retainer who has betrayed his calling to become a highwayman, robs and
kills an
old man―who turns out to be Kanpei’s father-in-law Yoichibei. Unable to
see
much of anything in the dark, Kanpei fires his hunting musket at what
he thinks
is a wild boar, and kills the thief Sadakurô. He takes the purse
from
the dead
man, which will lead him to believe he killed his father-in-law, and to
take
his own life in the following act.

The four
different prints here range over a period of more than five decades,
and reveal
an evolution from the plain but stylish Shun’ei print of Bandô
Mitsugorô II as
Kanpei in 1795 (15-A),
with minimal
background and primary concern for
the
presence of the actor, to the increasingly busy and dramatic works of
1805
(15-B)
and 1819 (15-D),
on to the positively baroque composition of
Kuniyoshi in
1849 (15-E).

The role of
Sadakurô, as seen here in both a print (15-B)
and recent stage photo
(15-A),
was
made famous by Nakamura Nakazô I in 1766, by eliminating all the
spoken
lines
and acting purely in mime―wonderfully epitomized by placing the stolen
purse in
his mouth. Another sort of performance tour de force is seen in 6-D,
where
Ichikawa Danjurô plays two different roles in one scene with the
“quick-change”
(hayagawari) technique that audiences
love.

Kanpei
is a figure of continuing misfortune from Act III until his demise in
Act VI. First
appearing as a handsome man deeply in love with his wife/lover Okaru,
he first pays
the price by dallying with her while his master Hangan makes the fatal
mistake
of striking Kira. In Acts V, as we have seen, he takes the purse of his
slain
father-in-law thinking that it was a gift from the gods, when in fact
it was
money obtained by selling his own wife into prostitution. In Act VI,
Kanpei’s
fall from grace continues. Led to believe that he has in fact killed
his
father-in-law, he takes his life.

Kanpei
first appears in Act VI on his return home from his nighttime adventure
in Act
V, filled with hope that the money in the purse taken from
Sadakurô’s
body will
gain him entry to the league. In this triptych (16-A),
he discovers as
he enters
the gate that Okaru is being taken off to the Gion pleasure quarter in Kyoto
by the brothel owner Ichimonjiya (on the right), and he defiantly stops
the
palanquin with his raised hand. As the Act progresses through complex
plot
twists, Kanpei is led to believe that the man he killed was his own
father-in-law, and he takes his dagger to his abdomen in a drawn-out
act of
self-inflicted seppuku―far more painful and bloody than that of Enya
Hangan in
Act IV. As we see here in Kunisada’s dramatic print, his body is marked
by
bloody handprints where he seems to have struck himself in
mortification.

Act VII
is the most popular of all the eleven acts of Kanadehon
Chûshingura for a variety of reasons, among them the
colorful setting of the Ichiriki teahouse and the complex psychological
depiction of Yuranosuke, who must at once convince the spies of Moranao
that he
has no interest in revenge, and at the same time persuade his fellow
rônin of
his dedication to precisely that goal. But it is also the wide
assortment of
witty stage devices used in this act that make
it a
perennial favorite.

Shown
here are two of the best-known such moments. Particularly geared to
pictorial
depiction is the scene in which Yuranosuke tries furtively to read a
letter
that has been delivered from his wife Kaoyo, reporting on the enemy’s
situation.
Unknown to him, Kanpei’s wife Okaru, who is now in service at the
teahouse,
looks down from a room above and thinks that it must be a love letter.
Lonely,
she wishes to read it and uses a mirror for illumination (optically
implausible
but very effective on the stage). Meanwhile, Moronaro’s spy
Kudayû
reads the
same letter from his hiding place beneath the veranda, as Yuranosuke
slowly
unrolls it. This famous scene is shown here by Yoshitoshi (17-A)
and in
a
parodic version by Sadatora (17-B)
where the characters are replaced by
three of
the Gods of Fortune.

After
Yuranosuke discovers Okaru in the room above, he gallantly helps her
down the
ladder (17-D,
an unusual vertical diptych, and 17-C),
making lascivious
comments
(omitted from early English translations of the play) about what he can
see
under her kimono.

Later
in Act VII, Okaru is confronted by her brother Heiemon, a retainer of
Enya
Hangan of lowly ashigaru
(footsoldier) rank who has been begging Yuranosuke to let him join to
league of
revenge. Upon discovering that Okaru has read the letter reporting on
Moranao,
Heiemon realizes that she must be prevented from revealing the secret
of the
plans for revenge, and that Yuranosuke will probably try to take her
life. He
therefore vows to kill her himself, but as he draws his sword, she
draws back
and tries to distract him with a shower of tissue papers drawn from the
breast
of her kimono. It is another one of the exciting stage moments that
typify Act
VII, as shown here (18-A)
in a print by Kunichika.

This
particular print, which was published in 1897, is a wonderful example
of the bright
and even garish colors that were in favor in woodblock prints of the
Meiji era.
The brightest of these were chemical aniline dyes from Europe; they have been much
disparaged by
connoisseurs of classical ukiyo-e, but in works like this, they work
effectively
to convey a sense of the color and excitement of the kabuki
theater.

Act IX
is perhaps the most unfairly neglected of the eleven acts of Kanadehon Chûshingura, since it is often
dropped in all-day performances (tôshi-kyôgen)
of the entire play, simply because the current kabuki schedules do not
allow
the time for it, even though it is recognized as an important and
effective
part of the play. It takes place in Ôboshi Yuranosuke’s residence
in
Yamashina,
on the outskirts of Kyoto, and centers on the character Kakogawa Honzô and his
wife
Tonase and daughter
Konami. The two women have come to visit the Ôboshi household to
complete
arrangements for the betrothal of Konami to Yuranosuke’s son
Rikiya―unaware
that both father and son are about to depart on their mission of
revenge.

In the
dramatic scene shown in this Kunisada triptych of 1837 (19-B),
we see
Tonase
preparing to take the life of her daughter Konami after her offer of
marriage
has been spurned by Yuranosuke’s wife O-Ishi, who stands to the right
holding a
wooden stand for which she will later demand the head of Honzô.
As
Konami
raises her sword to strike off Konami’s head, however, she hears the
flute of a
mendicant priest outside the gate (who is really Honzô in
disguise, as
clearly
labeled on the print) and a sudden voice “Stop!” She hesitates and
moves to
strike again, but the fluter and voice repeat. As she raises her sword
a third
time, she is stopped by O-Ishi, who has been observing from the side
and was moved
by the resolve of both mother and daughter.

TonasePrepares to Kill Konami as O-Ishi Looks on and Honzô Appears at the Gate as a Wandering
Monk with Flute

Act IX,
Kanadehon Chûshingura

Onoe Kikujurô II (d.1875)
as O-Ishi (R)

Onoe Baikô III (1784-1859) as Tonase
(M)

Iwai Matsunosuke II (dates unknown) as Konami (M)

Seki Sanjûrô II (1786-1839) as Kakogawa
Honzô (L)

Performed 1837.08,
Nakamura Theater, Edo

Ôban nishiki-e
triptych, publ. Kagaya Kichiemon

TsubouchiMemorialTheatreMuseum
100-0736-38

20. Act X: The
Faithful
Merchant Gihei

Act X
of Kanadehon Chûshingura is rarely
performed today, both because of its somewhat clumsy story line, and
because
the episode that it tells, of the “faithful merchant” Amakawaya Gihei,
is not
central to the overall story of the revenge against Moronao.
Nevertheless, the
character of Gihei was well known in the Edo period, above all for
the one scene depicted here (20-A)
in which he
defiantly protects a chest of weapons that he has procured for the
league
members from government police who accuse him of conspiracy with the
rônin. Not
realizing that the “police” are some of the rônin who wish to
test his
loyalty,
he valiantly leaps on top of the chest and declares his famous line of
defiance,
“Gihei of Amakawaya is a true man!” (Amakawaya
no Gihei wa otoko de gozaru zo). It is a model case of a merchant who
aspires to act like a samurai.

The
other item on display here (20-B)
also shows the defiant Gihei as he is
threatened by the “police,” but it is mostly notable as a very rare
example of
a preliminary sketch for a color woodblock print that was never
actually produced.
It is signed at the end by Kunisada, and mounted as a handscroll
together with
designs for nine other acts of the play. It provides a rare opportunity
to see
the direct hand of the leading artist of Chûshingura theater
prints

One
of ten preliminary sketches for series of ôban triptychs
depicting Acts
I-X of Kanadehon Chûshingura.

Signed at end
“Kôchôrô
Kunisada hitsu”

Handscroll, ca.
1830s, 37 cm H x 777 cm W

TsubouchiMemorialTheatreMuseum21

21. Act XI:
The Night Attack on Kira’s Mansion

The final act of
Kanadehon Chûshingura is much like the
“grand prelude” that begins it, colorful and spectacular―although now
the
atmosphere has changed completely from ominous foreboding to rousing
celebration. It presents the culmination of the revenge, the attack on
Moranao’s mansion and the taking of his head, mostly as a sequence of
swordfight
dances. It is on the whole brief, with minimal dialogue and no plot to
speak
of.

This triptych of
1817 (21-B)
is a wonderful example of the work of Toyokuni I, the
progenitor of
most of the Utagawa school artists who dominated late Edo
ukiyo-e. It shows Yuranosuke holding a lantern marked “Loyalty” (Chû) while another rônin confronts Moronao
with a spear as he emerges from among the charcoal bales. The scene
also
reminds us of the importance of costume, both on the kabuki stage and
in actor
prints like this that depict and celebrate it. Costume was of interest
from the
very morning on which the Akô retainers marched the seven miles
from
Kira’s
mansion to their master’s grave at Sengakuji, and eyewitness accounts
confirm
that they wore motley battle dress, heavily protected and giving the
impression
of fireman’s wear. On the stage, the attackers came to be dressed in
matching
jackets with the familiar black-and-white zigzag pattern that was
itself a
kabuki invention. Under the jackets, however, as we see here, the stage
attackers are elegantly and colorfully costumed, more ready to party
than
fight.

In the
final decades of the Tokugawa period, encouraged by a wave of
popularity for
warrior prints (musha-e) from the
1830s, particularly those of Kuniyoshi, there appeared numerous
triptychs
depicting the revenge of the 47 Rônin in ways that derived more
from
the
historical Akô vendetta than from the kabuki stage. This triptych
(22-A)
by
Kuniyoshi is a fine example of the genre, showing the rônin
gathering
at the
gate of the temple where their master lay buried. The historical
Sengakuji is
thinly disguised in the title as “Sengokuji,” and the labeled names
remain
similar to those of the kabuki stage, with the leader seated at the
bottom of
the middle panel identified as “Ôboshi Yuranosuke.” No such scene
appears,
however, in the original jôruri―which includes only the opinion
of
Yuranosuke
that “it would be best to end our lives before our master’s tomb,” but
never
follows them there. Kabuki as well ends only with the group setting out
for the
temple.

Here we
are rather offered an imagined view of the rônin arriving at the
temple
gate,
with a view out over EdoBay to the left. Their costume is that of the
kabuki stage, to be sure, but prints like these worked to recover the
historicity of the original Akô Incident, particularly since so
many
citizens
of Edo actually witnessed the march to Sengakuji on
that early winter morning.

“Having
Achieved Their Goal, the
Loyal Retainers Retreat to Sengokuji[sic]”

(Gishi
honmô o tasshite
Sengokuji e hikitori-katame no zu)

Ôban nishiki-e
triptych, publ. 1847-52 by Yorozuya Kichibei

TsubouchiMemorialTheatreMuseum
100-1487-89

23. Combining
the Acts:
Perspective Prints of Chûshingura

A large
category of Chûshingura prints depict not particular kabuki stage
performances
with identifiable actors, but rather a more generic version in which
the
characters appeared in a broad landscape setting. Many of these were in
the uki-e style that used exaggerated
Western perspective for dramatic effect (see 1-E), and were typically
issued in
sets of eleven, with one sheet for each act. Rather than focusing on a
single
famous scene in a given act, the prints shown hereskillfully combined two or more
scenes in one composition, offering a chronological sequence within a
single
space.

In
Masayoshi’s depiction of Act III (23-A),
for example, we start to the
lower
right as a bowing Honzô offers gifts to appease Moronao at the
gate of
the
Ashikaga mansion, while above inside the mansion appears the subsequent
scene
of Hangan attacking Moronao, while finally to the lower left is the
concluding
scene of Honzô (now appearing for the second time) fighting off
Bannai
and his
minions. Similarly, in Hokusai’s view of Act X of the same era (23-B),
the
“faithful merchant” Gihei appears twice, first talking with his wife
Osono at
the gate in the center, and then at the entrance to his store, the
Amakawaya,
defending an oddly small armor chest from the attacking “police.” The
stylized
clouds at the top of both these prints suggests a link to the older
tradition of
narrative handscrolls, as does the integration of temporal sequence
into a
single space.Prints like these may
well have been based on the jôruri rather than kabuki form of the
play.

An even
more ambitious sort of attempt to put multiple scenes onto a single
sheet can
be seen in “single view” (ichiran)
prints that combine iconic scenes from each act into a single overall
composition. In the triptych by Yoshitora (24-A),
the artist has devised
a
clever composition that moves in an S-shape, from top to bottom in the
right
sheet, then bottom to top in the middle, and again top to bottom on the
left.
The separate scenes are separated by fences and walls to create the
sense of a
naturally continuous space. The inclusion of the Act VIII michiyuki
suggests
that this represents the jôruri rather than kabuki version (see
the
descriptive
label below for identification of the scenes).

Of a
wholly different sort is Hiroshige’s five-sheet “comic parody” of Kanadehon Chûshingura (24-B),
which offers 26
vignettes that transpose well-known scenes of the play to the everyday
life of
street vendors and popular performers. Lady Kaoyo in Act I chooses a
pumpkin
instead of helmet (sheet 1, top), Sadakurô of Act V buys his
trademark
tattered
umbrella from Yoichibei (sheet 2, bottom left ),
Yuranosuke in Act VII selects a piece of octopus from Kudayû as a
street vendor
(sheet 3, middle left), and the rônin perform acrobatic tricks on
the
ladder
used for the night attack (sheet 5, bottom right). Only those
completely
familiar with the play would appreciate the ironic humor of these
scenes that bring
the high drama of Chûshingura down to
the level of ordinary life.

The
popularity of the 47 Rônin in the late Edo period was promoted as
much
by
legends of the historical Akô avengers as by the theatrical
tradition
of Kanadehon Chûshingura, a trend
stimulated largely by the genre of oral storytelling known as kôdan, which focused less on the overall
story of the vendetta than on tales of the individual “Gishi”
(‘righteous
samurai’). As a result, print series were created offering individual
portraits
of all 47 samurai, inevitably as they appeared in the night attack. The
two
sets sampled here bear the identical title of Seichû
gishinden, “Lives of the Righteous and Loyal Retainers,” but
they are very different in most other respects.

Kuniyoshi’s
version (25-A, 25-B)
dates from 1847-48, when it was still forbidden to
use the
real names of the Akô rônin, who appear rather under thinly
disguised
alternate
names―but not necessarily those used in Kanadehon
Chûshingura except for the leading half-dozen or so. The
apparent
historicity of the portraits is reinforced by the detailed text that
closely
reflects kôdan legends. In the
examples here, one is shown defending himself from kindling thrown when
Kira
was discovered, the other carefully putting out the fire in a brazier
after the
attack.

By
the time of Kunisada’s series of 1864 (25-C, 25-D),
however, the real
historical
names of the Gishi could be used with impunity―but they are shown as if
they
were being played by leading actors of the day! These were not real
performances, but imaginary ones that would cater to the interests of
both
Gishi fans and kabuki buffs. It is a curious reversal of Kuniyoshi’s
earlier
series, suggesting how deeply intertwined history and theater continued
to be
in the survival of the Chûshingura story.

The
original puppet play version of Kanadehon
Chûshingura was performed in Osaka, and was
written largely with an Osaka audience in mind, filled with domestic
subplots and frequent mention of money. Although it was to be in the
samurai
city of Edo that the kabuki form would most flourish, the
play continued to thrive in Osaka kabuki as well, developing a performance style and tradition
of its own
that remains alive today.

The
regular commercial production of multcolor
woodblock prints emerged
later in Osaka than in Edo, from the end of the
eighteenth century, and were largely
limited to kabuki actor prints. The techniques of printing came to
be very sophisticated, producing works of much higher average quality
than in Edo. The WasedaTheatreMuseum has about seventy Chûshingura prints from Osaka (compared
to some 800 from Edo), of which some examples are offered here. They reveal that Osaka prints
focused more on the individuality of
the actor than did Edo prints, with fewer distracting details. The
Shigefusa print of 1830 (26-A)
shows the actor Hakuen as Heiemon
against a
background filled only with a poem by the actor himself. The finely
printed
paired portraits of Moronao
and Lady
Kaoyo by Hirosada two decades
later (26-B)
are in the smaller and more intimate chûban
format, with a close-up composition that provides more sense of
personal
presence than the larger and more distanced actor prints of Edo.

The
political revolution of 1868 changed much in Japan,
but it does not seem to have quenched the
popularity of Kanadehon Chûshingura. If
anything, the total number of performances increased, in both
metropolitan and
provincial theaters. But perhaps most striking was the proliferation of
the
genre of “kakikae” spinoffs, plays
that took off from the basic Chûshingura story and went in new
directions, a
trend that was already well underway in the late Edo period.

The
triptychs displayed her advertise two such kakikae
versions, plays that are never performed today but had their own time
in the
limelight. Both feature Ichikawa Danjûrô IX, often known
simple as “The
Ninth”
(Kudaime), a legendary actor who
introduced numerous new techniques to kabuki in general and to Kanadehon Chûshingura in particular. In a
Kunichika triptych of 1897 (27-A),
he is shown as Yuranosuke in a kakikae that features
him in a striking
pose next to a stage curtain (a Meiji innovation) covered with
advertisements
for various medicinal products that seem particular oriented to women:
two
cleansers for whiter skin, two eye medicines, one talcum power to deal
with
perspiration, one anti-ague cure, and a vaginal treatment that “need
not be
taken orally.”

It is
not possible in this exhibition to do anything more than hint at the
continuing
vitality of Kanadehon Chûshingura as
a living performance tradition in modern Japan
through these two posters from the WasedaTheatreMuseum.
Representing the pre-World War II era is a
poster (28-A)
for a performance of all
eleven acts of Kanadehon
Chûshingura in November 1928, in an era when
Chûshingura
in general was immensely popular. It was performed at the Hongô
Theater
in Tokyo, which was founded in early Meiji and thrived
on until the great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, when it was destroyed and
struggled to recover until folding in 1930, two years after this
performance.

Very
different is the English-language poster (28-B)
for a November 1951
performance
at the Kabuki-za in Tokyo, just months before the end of the postwar American
occupation of Japan. The occupation authorities had initially
banned Chûshingura, along with many
other plays considered militaristic and “feudal,” but it was revived in
November 1947 and has continued to be performed regularly until the
present.
The poster does not mention Chûshingura
specifically, but the figure of Yuranosuke specifies the content, and
theater
records confirm that Acts I, III, IV, and the Michiyuki of Kanadehon
Chûshingura were performed as part of that month’s
program, with Nakamura Kichiemon playing Yuranosuke.

Until
the advent of television in the 1960s, the Chûshingura story was
the
single
most popular genre in modern Japanese film. It began in the 1910s with
film
renderings of kabuki dances from Kanadehon
Chûshingura, but by the 1930s a distinctively modern film
approach
had been
established, drawing more directly on the historical Akô Incident
while
incorporating many apocryphal legends from the kôdan
storytelling tradition. And just as the kabuki tradition
generated countless spin-off variants of the central Kanadehon
Chûshingura lineage, so many films dealt with the
exploits of individual members of the league of revenge.

One
of
the many mainstream Chûshingura
feature films was written and directed by Kinugasa Teinosuke and
produced by
Shôchiku, opening in December 1932. The poster for the film shown
here
(29-A)
is particular notable for its innovative modernist typography and
stylish
design, featuring a lance with the kana “i”
tag of the leader of the league, Ôishi Kuranosuke. The other
poster
(29-B) is
for Genroku Chûshingura, a two-part film
directed by
Mizoguchi Kenji and based on a series of modern kabuki plays by Mayama
Seika. Both
the original plays and Mizoguchi’s film version aspired to a new level
of
historical accuracy, although a number of artistic liberties were taken
with
the details. The Mizoguchi film is also celebrated today for its
distinctively “monumental style,” a slow and stately form of
cinematography.
The poster is for Part II of the film, which was released in January
1942, just
after the beginning of war with the United States, and shows the scene
in which
the rônin offer the head of Kira (wrapped in a white cloth)
before
their
master’s grave.